ppsal, which must have been supported by at least one-tenth of the citizens possessing the franchise, is requisite. If it be a case of an alteration of the constitution or of the dissolution of the Diet, the support of one-fifth of the electorate is required. This right of direct cooperation by the people is intended to be a substitute for the " balance of powers which is lacking in the constitution. To this extent the Bavarian constitution, as indeed the constitutions of the other German territories and that of the Reich, contains an element which signifies " direct democracy."
The Diet consists of a single Chamber. There is no Upper House. All men and women who have completed their twentieth year have the franchise. They elect the deputies by secret ballot on the basis of proportional representation, arranged so that there is a deputy for every 40,000 inhabitants. The details of electoral procedure are fixed by a separate electoral law. Only citizens of Bavaria who have completed their twenty-fifth year are eligible.
The ministry is appointed by the Diet in the following manner. First the minister-president is elected. He submits a list of the candidates whom he proposes for the other ministerial posts, and the ministers are appointed with the assent of the Diet. It is not req- uisite that ministers should be members of the Diet. The real organ of the executive is the ministry as a whole, but it is at the same time, as follows from what has been said, dependent upoYi the Diet. The ministry adopts its decisions by majority. The minister- president presides over the whole ministry and has a casting vote when the voting is equally divided. The ministry distributes the affairs of the state among the different ministerial departments and makes the appointments to the most important administrative posts. It issues general ordinances for the conduct of administration and decides upon the legislative measures which are to be submitted in the name of the Government to the Diet. If a minister in the exercise of his office has designedly or by gross negligence infringed the constitution or one of the laws, he may be impeached by resolu- tion of the Diet before the Court of Jurisdiction in State Affairs (Staatsgerichtshof). The penalty for ministers who are found guilty is dismissal from office. The majority of the Court of Jurisdiction in State Affairs consists of members of the Diet ; the minority is com- posed of official judges.
Legislation is conducted in the following manner: The Diet votes upon the bills which are initiated among its own members or are laid before it by the popular initiative (Volksbegehren). An appeal to the popular decision (Volksentscheidung), or referendum, on a legislative measure arises (l) when the Diet rejects a popular demand (Volksbegehren) for the enactment of a law; or (2) when the Diet passes a law without a popular demand for it having been presented, and when thereupon an appeal is made to the popular decision ( Volksentscheidung) either in consequence of a resolution of the ministry or in consequence of a popular demand ( Volksbegehren) for the referendum. There is, however, an important class of laws which are exempt from the referendum, in particular laws relating to the budget or relating to taxes or excise duties, and laws dealing with the salaries of officials. There is likewise no referendum in the case of a law which the Diet has declared to be urgent.
The estimates are annually fixed by the Diet by legislation. But, in order to preclude reckless finance on the part of the Diet, the constitution prescribes that, on the demand of the ministry, there shall be a second reading of those financial resolutions which have the effect of increasing the amount of the items or of introducing fresh items of expenditure. At the second time of voting such resolu- tions a majority of two-thirds of the members present is requisite. Once the measure is voted, it is dispatched by the president of the Diet and the whole ministry, and is promulgated.
BAZIN, RENE (1853- ), French novelist and man of letters (see 3.561), produced two further novels, Davidee Birot
(1912) and Gingolph abandonne (1914), as well as a volume of
travel sketches, Nord-Sud Amfrique, etc. (1913) in the pre-war
period. After 1914 he published two volumes of war sketches,
Pages religieuses (1915) and Aujourd'hui et demain (1916), as
well as two novels, La Closerie de Champdolent (1917) and Les
nouveaux Oberli (1919).
BEACH, REX (1877- ), American writer, was born at Atwood, Mich., Sept. i 1877. He was educated at Rollins College, Fla. (1891-6), the Chicago College of Law (1896-7), and Kent College of Law, Chicago (1899-1900).
His tales of adventure include Pardners (1905); The Spoilers (1906, also dramatized); The Barrier (1907); The Silver Horde (1909' Going Some (1910, also dramatized); The Ne'er-do-Well (1911 The Net (1912); The Iron Trail (1913); The Auction Block (1914! Heart of the Sunset (1915); Rainbow's End (1916); The Crimson Gardenia, and Other Tales of Adventure (1916); Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories (1917); Too Fat to Fight (1919); Oh, Shoot! (1921).
BEATTY, DAVID BEATTY, 1ST EARL (1871- ), British
admiral, was born in Ireland in 1871, the son of Capt. D. L. Beatty, 4th Hussars, of Borodale. He was not, as so many naval officers are, predestined to his profession by family association or tradition, which in his case took its tone chiefly from the army and the hunting-field; his father was a well-known figure in the Leicestershire world of the 'eighties and 'nineties. That David alone of the family went into the navy was largely a matter of accident, and his own choice at the age
of 13, when he was sent to the Royal Naval Academy at Gos-
port, can certainly have had little to do with it. Yet within 35
years of that date he had run through the whole gamut of naval
possibilities, including those attained only rarely by naval
men of any age Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet,
Admiral-of-the-Fleet, and First Sea Lord to say nothing of
an earldom, the thanks of Parliament, the O.M., and the Lord
Rectorship of Edinburgh University. His sea service combined
the maximum of variety with a minimum of mere routine. As
midshipman he served in the Mediterranean flagship " Alex-
andra " and with the training squadron in the " Ruby." He
was sub-lieutenant in the " Nile " and the yacht " Victoria and
Albert." His six years of service as lieutenant were passed in
the " Ruby," " Camperdown " and " Trafalgar "; in the Ports-
mouth destroyer flotilla, and in the Nile gunboats. His service
there and in the battles of Atbara and Omdurman won
him his commandership, and in that rank he served in the
" Barfleur." The Boxer rising gave him another opportunity
of active service; he was wounded while in command of a shore
party, when his dash and leadership won him further promo-
tion, and he became captain at the record age of twenty-nine.
From 1900 to 1910 he was in command successively of the
cruisers " Juno," " Arrogant " and " Suffolk," and the battle-
ship " Queen." In the naval manoeuvres of 1912 he flew in the
" Aboukir " his flag as rear-admiral, a rank which he had
attained 24 years from the day the boy of 13 had entered Gos-
port Academy.
Even up to this point his career establishes a record in the history of the navy. It was, in a sense, so far as the navy was concerned, an obscure career, unhelped by " influence," un- known to the public, undistinguished by the kind of fame attained by the passing of examinations. It was remarkable only by its brilliant rapidity. What he had done he had done by himself, and he had come under no personal influence, with the possible exception of that of Lord Kitchener as Sirdar, that had particularly inspired or moulded him. He was never at the top of any of the lists of his rank, but generally near the bottom, from which he would leap, by sheer merit of service, to a similar humble position at the bottom of the next list, thus passing on the ladder hosts of officers who were laboriously climbing by the routine of seniority and the death or promotion of those above them. To make legal his promotion to flag rank in 1910 a special Order in Council had to be passed, as he had not served the statutory time in command of a ship at sea. His two Admir- alty appointments afforded him brief but valuable experience. While still a captain he had acted for about a year as naval adviser to the War Council; and under Mr. Churchill he became naval secretary to the First Lord. In this capacity he assisted at the conference held at Malta in 1912 when the decision was made to reconstitute the Mediterranean fleet by replacing the older battleships by a smaller but more modern force of battle cruisers. In 1913 he was appointed to the command of the First Battle Cruiser Squadron, the fastest and most powerful scouting force ever launched, and hoisted his flag in the " Lion " (March i).
From this brief outline of his service career it will be observed that Beatty escaped two things. By seizing every opportunity for fighting service he avoided that long period of drudgery in big ships which had for some time been recognized as having a deadening effect on the fighting spirit and initiative of naval officers. Similarly he was equally successful in avoiding long periods of shore service at the Admiralty which, valuable as they may be as a training in administrative work, do not tend to develop the entirely different set of qualities demanded of an officer in high command afloat in time of war. Of adminis- trative work in the large sense Beatty had practically no expe- rience at all when he hoisted his flag in the " Lion " and pro-
